Ask Bronco Mendenhall a question and he’s apt to answer with a book review. Not a tome about football, mind you. Or one written by a fellow coach.

No, leadership and organizational management are Mendenhall’s preferred themes, and that’s certainly the case when he discusses Virginia’s seniors this season.

“There’s a fantastic book called ‘Change or Die,’ ” said Mendenhall, the Cavaliers’ third-year head coach. “It talks about the psychology of change, some of the things that are necessary. Ultimately, the existing players have to believe in the new leader, and that has to be established over time.

“That’s point one. But point number two is they also have to believe in the methodology and the strategy to deliver the leader’s vision. Those two things are separate and distinct. They need constant care and nurturing and tending to. We meet every morning as a team and basically keep addressing those things.”

Written by business journalist Alan Deutschman, a professor at the University of Nevada, the book helped Mendenhall sell his vision, witness U.Va.’s first winning season since 2011 and first back-to-back bowl appearances since 2004 and ’05.

But no matter how persuasive the pitch, the targets have to be willing. They have to listen; they have to believe.

Mendenhall’s 99 victories and 11 bowl appearances in as many seasons at Brigham Young gave him immediate credibility with his new players, who were weary from years of losing. But Mendenhall’s quirky motivational tactics — requiring everyone to earn a jersey number each year is the most obvious — and devotion to analytics are an acquired taste.

Still, this team’s seniors, rising sophomores when Mendenhall succeeded Mike London, bought in. And what the group lacks in numbers it has in value.

“I would say every single year it was more and more people (believing),” Peace said after a practice for Saturday’s Belk Bowl against South Carolina.

“I think it was easy to trust what he was saying,” Zaccheaus said, “but the work was hard, especially when you don’t have success right away. … We just trusted in the process and trusted in each other and stuck with it.”

The Cavaliers went 2-10 in Mendenhall’s Virginia debut, 6-7 last year. Their 7-5 record entering the Belk Bowl assures the program a winning season for the first time since London’s 2011 squad went 8-5.

“We just wanted to be successful,” Fieler said. “Nobody liked having those losing seasons. He came in with a track record in what he did, and … it was never he just told us to do something.

“He’s always got his reasoning behind it and why this will make us successful. … Those things coupled together — his track record, all his data, his reasoning and stuff like that — it’s easy to follow a guy like that because you know the results are going to be there if you do what he says.”

The Cavaliers’ most decorated players this season are quarterback Bryce Perkins and cornerback Bryce Hall, both juniors. Media voted Perkins the state’s Division I Player of the Year — the Dudley Award — and Hall a second-team All-American.

But the seniors are the core.

Zaccheaus this season broke Billy McMullen’s school record for career receptions — he’s at 238 and counting — while Thornhill emerged as a worthy successor to All-American Quin Blanding. Both made first-team All-ACC last month.

Peace leads the conference’s linebackers in sacks for the second consecutive season, while Butts does whatever is asked at tight end. Ellis has rushed for 920 yards, and the versatile Fieler has anchored the offensive line.

“Our seniors over time have just chosen to embrace and support me as their coach,” Mendenhall said, “which, that’s a choice they get to make, which I’m very grateful that they’ve done that. They also then have to endorse and support what we do and how we’re doing it. They’ve done that as well. The progress we’ve made over the past number of years would not have happened without them. I’m very appreciative of that group.”

Clearly that support has resonated throughout the locker room, and if everyone returns as scheduled, Virginia should again contend in the ACC’s Coastal Division.

Perkins and Hall are the linchpins, but they have considerable company in the form of receivers Joe Reed, Hasise Dubois and Tavares Kelly, defensive end Eli Hanback, linebackers Charles Snowden, Jordan Mack and Zane Zandier, and safety Brenton Nelson.

“Coach Mendenhall always says it,” Zaccheaus said. “The future will be whatever we want to make it. It comes down to us holding each other accountable … and just working and working and never settling for being just average.

“We have (talented) guys coming back next year, but if they don’t do anything with what we learned this year and don’t build upon that, it’s going to go in the trash. … We have a great group of guys. I’m sure it will move in the right direction.”

“Last year was just the foundation,” said Fieler, who graduated with a degree in foreign affairs. “Now we’re stacking another layer on it this year, hopefully getting eight wins, and I think next year the limit is the sky. … And I think it’s Coach Mendenhall’s guys. He’s getting the people in for his program, guys who are going to work for this program. I think the future is bright, as bright as it’s been around here in a long time.”

Agreed. Perkins next season will be the Cavaliers’ most talented incumbent quarterback since Matt Schaub in 2003. Eight starters are set to return from a defense that’s yielding 21.8 points per game, third in the ACC and U.Va.’s best in a decade.

Change or die isn’t a literal choice in Deutschman’s book, and it wasn’t for the Cavaliers in 2016. But absent change, clearly the program was in peril.

The seniors, Mendenhall said, “are everything. They’re the glue, the mortar, the things that have held things together. When some of the higher-drama personalities want to go up and down, they just keep working. Then when there was maybe a great win, they just keep working. When there is a tough loss, they just keep working.

“So the consistency and the embodiment of the core principles of the program, those guys are just unwavering. It’s been essential to the progress that we have made and we are making.”